The Living End (Daniel Faust #3)(4)

“It’s definitely headed your way,” Bentley said, “but it’s not Lauren or Meadow. Cormie senses four people in the van, none of them magicians, but they’ve got Lauren’s…fingerprints on them, I suppose you could say. She’s touched them with her power.”

My sixth sense was screaming now. I felt like I was trying to work a jigsaw puzzle with someone blasting an air horn next to my ear. Had we missed something? The email tap had worked fine for us in the past. That was how we’d gotten a heads-up about Lauren’s dinner party and even manipulated messages between her and her agents to give us the inside edge—

—which she could have figured out, when she finally emerged from the wreckage of her house.

“It’s a trap,” I said, realizing how we’d walked into our own killing box. “She knew we were reading her emails. She was never coming here today.”

“What?” Caitlin said, but I was already standing up fast enough to knock my chair over.

“Everyone!” I shouted, turning every startled face in the almost-empty restaurant. “There’s an emergency. You need to leave, right now!”

They looked at me like I was crazy, not budging from their chairs. The seconds turned into a slow, nauseous crawl as I felt the trap close over our heads. A red plastic fire-alarm box hung on the wall a few tables away. I ran over, grabbed the handle, and yanked it down. That got the civilians on their feet, as a shrill klaxon whined from the ceiling.

The van screeched to a stop on the street outside. The rusted-out side door rattled open, and I had just enough time to register the two men crouched in back, red bandannas tied over their faces and sunlight glinting off the assault rifles in their arms, before they opened fire.

The restaurant windows exploded. I threw myself to the floorboards, landing hard on my shoulder and rolling, just in time to see our waitress catch the first blast. She jolted backward on her feet, dancing a jig of death with her white blouse sprouting tiny scarlet mushroom clouds, and collapsed to the floor in a bloody ruin. Caitlin and Jennifer both flipped their tables onto their sides, crouching low and using them for makeshift shields. I trench-crawled my way to Caitlin as the storm of bullets tore the restaurant into splinters.

I pulled my piece, a Taurus Judge Magnum. It was a big black bull of a gun chambered for .454, and it barked like a Doberman as I snapped off a couple of wild shots. The van’s passenger leaned out his window with a machine pistol, adding a staccato beat to the basso boom of the other two gunmen. I heard an elderly woman screaming from somewhere close to the door, but I didn’t have time to think about the casualties right now. The hitters were pros. As soon as one shooter spent his magazine, his partner laid down fire and gave him a chance to reload. They had us pinned like rats.

Caitlin’s pistol, a sleek little nine millimeter she’d borrowed from Jennifer, clicked on an empty chamber. She cursed under her breath and jumped up, running toward the restaurant wall. I barely had time to react before she snatched one of the antique pickaxes from the wall, spun, and hurled it faster and harder than any human being could dream of. The ax whirled through the air, spinning end over end, and buried itself with a bone-crunching spurt in one of the rifleman’s chests. He fell back, spitting blood, and his partner froze.

I thought it was the opening we needed, but then I saw the surprise the driver had been getting ready on the other side of the van. He stepped into sight, another phantom in a bandanna and shades, with an olive-and-black steel tube slung over one shoulder. It rattled as he leveled it in his gloved hands. He dropped to one knee in a perfect shooter’s stance, priming the weapon.

“RPG!” I screamed, breaking cover. “Out the back, now now now!”

I pulled the trigger as fast as my finger could work it, the Judge’s cylinders spinning and spitting out covering fire while Caitlin and Jennifer ran ahead of me. I turned and hit the swinging door, bursting into the abandoned kitchen. We’d almost made it out the back when the grenade hit.

The world twisted sideways, and I went flat as the kitchen door blasted off its hinges on a gout of fire and roiling black smoke. The shock wave hit me like a giant’s fist, and for a second the entire universe was nothing but white light and the sound of a cannon going off in my ears. A hand pulled me to my feet. Caitlin shouted something, but I couldn’t hear a word of it over the ringing echoes of the aftermath. We stumbled out into the dusty back lot, eyes squinting against the sudden sunlight, the restaurant a roaring inferno at our backs.

My hearing swam back just in time to catch Bentley’s panicked voice over my earpiece.

“—coming around! They’re back in the van and coming around the building! Get out of there now!”





Two



Caitlin and I were empty, and Jennifer had two bullets to her name. We stood side by side in the empty lot, catching our breaths as the van roared around the side of the burning restaurant.

“Gloves off,” I hissed and holstered my empty gun. My deck of cards leaped from my hip pocket in a spray of red and black, riffling into my outstretched hand.

“Fucking right,” Jennifer said, trading her .357 for the gleaming razor blade that dangled from a chain around her neck. She dodged to one side, using the back wall as cover while she broke into a guttural German chant.

The van rolled into sight. The passenger leaned out his window, machine pistol reloaded and ready, but as he squeezed the trigger I scattered a handful of cards into the air. Three cards caught three bullets, each one falling to the dirt with a crumpled shell buried in its heart. The fourth card sliced through the air and slashed the shooter’s shoulder to the bone. He dropped the pistol, instinctively grabbing his wounded arm, and fell back into the van.